Khan kept in jail over 'weak' marriage case, his party says

Pakistan’s former leader Imran Khan married his current wife Bushra Bibi just months before he ascended to the premiership of the country in 2018, making it the popular cricketer-turnedpolitician’s third marriage after two divorces.

- MAROOSHA MUZAFFAR

He could not have known at the time that, six years later, the procedure and timings surrounding that wedding would be the only reason he remains behind bars, having been ousted as prime minister in a vote of no confidence and then pursued by the authorities with some 170 criminal charges.

Khan has since been acquitted or granted bail on many of the most serious of those charges – all of which Khan says are politically motivated. The latest example of this came just last week, when Khan was acquitted of exposing state secrets for publicly revealing a diplomatic cable at a political rally in 2022.

That ruling meant that the only offence on Khan’s lengthy charge list keeping him in prison was a ruling from February this year that his marriage to Bibi, 49, in 2018 was un-Islamic and illegal. The judge in the case fined them PKR500,000 (£1,420) and sentenced both to seven years in jail.

“It’s the weakest out of all the cases that was put [against him],” says Syed Zulfikar Bukhari, a close aide of Khan and one of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party’s most senior officials not being held in jail himself. “All of them were weak but this was especially weak,” Bukhari tells The Independent. “He is in jail now just because he married his wife.”

Bibi’s ex-husband Khawar Maneka alleges her marriage to Khan violated Muslim family law. According to Islamic law, a Muslim widow or a divorcee has to abide by the “iddat” – a waiting period before they can lawfully enter into a new marriage.

According to the Quran, a menstruating woman must observe three monthly cycles before remarriage, while a nonmenstruating woman must wait for three lunar months. For widows, the required delay is four months and 10 days. These rules are aimed at eliminating any uncertainty regarding paternity if a woman becomes pregnant shortly before her separation from her spouse or his death.